I am a native Clevelander who grew up in the 1970s and 1980's in the East Side suburbs. I left for Ohio State, graduated, and obtained an advanced degree in Michigan (not at Michigan). Then I moved to Georgia. I've been here since 1994.
I know how to write. I prefer writing articles to copy editing. Most people editing over me improve me. I stay out of controversial articles and most biographies of living persons as I don't like seeing my hard (and accurate) work erased over the same day because some fanatic can't stay off the Katy Perry page or the Bridgit Mendler page (or whomever is the flavor of the month). But my copy editing is improving. The historical, geographical and pop culture articles I write tend to be arcane topics of local interest or other things around me when I grew up. I try to write what I know.
For example, Mark B., the cousin of my (then- but now ex-) wife, on her dad's side, was one of the concertgoers who fell or jumped off the upper deck (or through the net) at a World Series of Rock show at Cleveland Stadium in 1978. I remember hearing people talk about it, even back then, years and years before. Then I pulled newspaper microfilm to learn about how Mark fell and realized that in the time I was spending, I could be researching an entire article. It turned out that at least two or three other guys hurt themselves the same way. Mark survived at least into his 50s, badly brain damaged and stuck in a wheelchair for life. He fell a long, long way to the lower deck and, according to family, broke an unlucky girl's arm as he landed. Perhaps she saved his life by breaking his fall. My then-better half told me that before his accident, Mark was a handsome, personable guy who had much going for him. At least three other men fell too, in separate incidents. Without this personal connection, it would not have occurred to me to write this article. My then-wife's uncle on her mom's side of her family, incidentally, was a crew member who perished aboard the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.
In 1979, a psychopath killed a boy my age named Kevin Green, a City of Cleveland West Sider, by multiple stabbings with an ice pick. He left the body near railroad tracks. This horrific news was all over TV for months. Then I saw an acquaintance of mine, Bill C., on the TV news, dressed in a tie, being interviewed in front of cameras after testifying at the Justice Center. Bill, who lived in South Euclid, narrowly escaped a similar death. He was 13 years old, bright and older than me, but he was of slight build and no match for a grown man. While Bill was in the South Euclid library on Mayfield Road, just east of Green Road, the psycho slashed the tires on Bill's bicycle parked outside. When Bill came out, Kevin's murderer came by and offered to take Bill to a place up the street to buy a new tire, in a friendly way, pretending to be a Good Samaritan. Where the murderer said they would go was a large stretch of land that Bill knew was undeveloped woods. Worse, this guy seemed "really weird" (Bill repeatedly emphasized that) and something wasn't right. It may also have been that he had murdered Kevin Green only days before, or had raped and assaulted other young boys before him (tying one poor victim to a tree in a park), and he came off overly intense and fanatical. He wasn't exactly "chill," to put it into today's terms. Bill made an excuse, escaped and called the police. He had put two and two together on his own, tying his slashed tires to the news reports of a murder of a boy his age with an ice pick. His testimony persuaded the court to lock the murderer up at Lima State (since closed). We learned from police that the same ice pick used to slash Bill's tires had been the weapon he used to stab Kevin Green. We had made a fire on the beach, and Bill told us the whole story. It was very late at night, and it was the scariest thing I had ever heard. We could barely absorb the details. I'd like to find a way to write about all this, though it may not be notable, so this may be it. I have been unable to locate any discussion of Kevin's murder on the internet. The murderer (whose name doesn't bear mention) unsuccessfully sued the state years ago as he was roughed up in prison, appealed his loss, and had the loss overturned, at least temporarily.
These articles I started from scratch, or dramatically expanded from a two-sentence stub:
World Series of Rock, Dugway Brook Watershed, Blue Hole (Castalia), Ski Party, The Wild Angels, The Trip (film).
These articles I edited extensively:
Peter Fonda, She Said She Said, Chinatown (film), Ghoulardi, Coventry Village.
My favorite Wikipedia articles are information-packed, but as easy to read as USA Today. My least favorite articles tend to be sports-related as the quality of authorship is often poor. Some of these guys need to pick up a copy of Elements of Style (or even Dick and Jane). Jeez!
When I say something offensive, it is not deliberate. Still, I avoid political correctness. It amazes me how quickly taboos shift. If you doubt this, watch the movies Blazing Saddles, National Lampoon's Animal House and Airplane and ask yourself if any of them could be made today. Or for that matter, Caddyshack. Or on TV, will we ever see another "Sanford and Son?" (Black owners of a junkyard in Watts? Indeed!) In certain other respects, these movies are all tame. When these movies were made, someone like Tila Tequila couldn't have been on TV at all, let alone have her own show.
I love 1960s nostalgia, and a lot of other inconsequential food for the masses of the time of minimal cultural value, including beach movies and surf and car culture. The 1950s did not end, from a cultural standpoint, until President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Hippies are an enduring image of the 1960s, but very, very few young people were really hippies in the 1960s, or even looked like them. Hippie dress and hair caught on in the mainstream in the early to mid-1970s. Young men did not typically wear their hair over their ears until 1970 or 1971.
When I get over my childhood issues, I'll write about some things more relevant to my "new" station in life.